[partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

olive · 2016-02-14 11:23:48

When I select text in abiword, the selection appears as solid black making it impossible to read the selected text (while it is selected). A Goggle search show that some people have experienced this problem and the solution almost always point to a problem with a GTK3 theme. However, this problem only appears with abiword, any other gtk3 (or gtk2) application behave properly with text selected as blue (tested for example in gedit). My theme is the default Adwaida and I use xfce (but the problem appears also with simple WM like icewm). Note that this problem does not appear in Ubuntu. Could someone has a clue of the problem?

Last edited by olive (2016-02-16 10:22:15)

ooo · 2016-02-14 14:53:37

I can reproduce this when using Adwaita theme, while some other themes work. This should probably be reported to gtk+ developers as a bug in Adwaita.

The nice thing about gtk3 is that you can easily fix minor themeing issues by injecting css.
This changes the selection color in Abiword, simply add it to your user's ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css (and restart Abiword) to apply.

ApDocView:selected {
  background-color:  #4A90D9;
  color: white;
}

#4A90D9 is the blue used in Adwaita, but you can change it to any color you prefer.

EDIT: added white text color to the css

Last edited by ooo (2016-02-14 18:05:11)

olive · 2016-02-14 19:22:28

Thanks a lot! That fixes the problem. Although I still wonder why other apps wasn't affected. Anyway, my problem is solved.

ooo · 2016-02-14 19:56:52

olive wrote:

Although I still wonder why other apps wasn't affected.

I believe the ApDocView widget is abiword specific and not used elsewhere. Therefore it requires some special attention from gtk theme developers.

olive · 2016-02-16 10:20:53

I still experience an issue. With this configuration, when I change the zoom level (control+wheel or View -> Zoom -> select the zoom level) the display become completely corrupt (it flickers and the text disappear). This does not appear without this configuration. This is of course completely weird, how changing colors in a css theme can lead to this??? But this is what I experience... Can you reproduce this?

Last edited by olive (2016-02-16 10:25:56)

ooo · 2016-02-16 13:35:52

Unfortunately I can't reproduce. There's no corruption if I change the zoom level, or any view settings, with or without the css tweak.

For the record, this is under gnome-shell on X with intel gfx.

algorythm · 2016-02-16 18:30:12

If there's graphical corruption, why don't you report a bug?

Salkay · 2016-03-10 05:24:33

olive wrote:

I still experience an issue. With this configuration, when I change the zoom level (control+wheel or View -> Zoom -> select the zoom level) the display become completely corrupt (it flickers and the text disappear). This does not appear without this configuration. This is of course completely weird, how changing colors in a css theme can lead to this??? But this is what I experience... Can you reproduce this?

I have the "black selection" issue too, using Breeze-gtk as my theme. I tried the css fix, and FWIW I'm now seeing glitches too. In my case, I don't even have to change the zoom level. I see a grey rectangle flashing over the top sixth of my document. In fact, for me, zooming in to 150% fixes this for me.

I tried investigating some other themes. Oddly enough, when I tried Orion or oxygen-gtk (with the css file removed), I could see the same glitch there… so I guess it's related somehow to certain themes (and/or css) interpretations.

Last edited by Salkay (2016-03-10 05:27:17)

ooo · 2016-03-10 19:22:35

I can't investigate this, since I can't reproduce the screen corruption on my system, but you could try modifying the gtk.css to narrow down the cause. Try e.g. if the glitches occur only with the 'color' injection and remove the 'background-color' and vice versa, or try non-hex color value for background-color etc.

Salkay · 2016-03-11 00:23:21

Thanks for the advice. I tried all permutations I could think of. I tried with only one line (i.e. background-color or color only). Then I tried each single line with either a hex or non-hex code. I get the glitches in all cases. FWIW I also tried with *no* colours, which does *not* show the glitch.

I initially thought I could try to directly modify the scheme, to see if that would still bug out. However, I grepped through the source for `ApDocView:selected` but couldn't find anything. I also used a colour picker to confirm that the background was exactly black (which it was), then tried to grep for `background-color:\s*black` or `background-color:\s*#000000`, but neither of these were found either. Is there another string that I could look for?

ooo · 2016-03-11 01:01:16

I'm guessing it uses black as a fallback for the selection if the color is not defined in theme.

Sounds like themeing the ApDocView in any way causes glitches on some setups. This should probably be reported as a bug to abiword.

Which graphics driver are you using btw?

Salkay · 2016-03-11 01:12:18

Thank you again for your help. I'm just using xf86-video-intel. Okay, I'll report the bug in Abiword. However, before I do that, I just wanted to double check if I see either issue in other GTK3 applications. Do you know if there is a way to find out which applications use gtk3? I tried `pacman -Qi gtk3`, to look at `Required By`, but this didn't seem to include all (including abiword).

ooo · 2016-03-11 05:14:11

Which AccelMethod are you using with intel? I don't see the glitch using default SNA.

You can use ldd to find out if binary is linked against gtk3,

$ ldd /usr/bin/gedit | grep libgtk-3

for example, or just google it.

The document view is custom widget for abiword, and if the glitch only presents itself on it, this is clearly a bug in abiword.

Last edited by ooo (2016-03-11 05:14:40)

Salkay · 2016-03-12 03:25:41

I wasn't 100% sure what you were talking about, so I checked the Arch wiki. I don't have any file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ that relates to the graphic driver. (So I guess it's set to default?)

I tried meld, which (according to Wikipedia) is a GTK3 program. However, this displays selected text legibly. Hence, I guess that Abiword is defaulting to some non-sensible default. And hence the original selection bug might be in Abiword rather than the theme?

ooo · 2016-03-12 19:33:21

Can you check your Xorg.0.log for which AccelMethod is being used (or upload it somewhere and link here). I'm just trying to figure out what causes the glitches you're seeing, while I'm not.

The text selection color is definitely a bug in abiword. The document view widget is custom widget for abiword created by abiword developers, and not part of gtk+ and therefore not used on other applications. The colors can be changed via gtk theme, but abiword should provide sane default colors for selection as well.

When you report the bug, you should also report the glitches you're seeing after fixing the selection color with css injection, as they also seem specific to that abiword widget. It would be nice to figure out why the glitches appear on some systems and not on others though. That's why I asked about your AccelMethod.

Last edited by ooo (2016-03-12 19:34:01)

Salkay · 2016-03-17 01:09:27

ooo wrote:

Can you check your Xorg.0.log for which AccelMethod is being used.

Sorry for the delay. What string am I looking for exactly?

ooo · 2016-03-17 02:33:07

There are three AccelMethods for intel: SNA, UXA and glamor. You can just grep the log file for those.
Make sure you check the right log file, as it's location depends on whether you run Xorg as root or normal user.

Salkay · 2016-03-17 02:38:55

The only file named `Xorg.0.log` is at `/var/log/Xorg.0.log`. I grepped for each of those three strings and the only hit was for SNA.

[    14.980] (II) intel(0): SNA compiled from 2.99.917-560-gd167280
...
[    15.004] (II) intel(0): SNA initialized with Sandybridge (gen6, gt2) backend

ooo · 2016-03-17 13:11:35

Graphical glitches are not uncommon with SNA, so you could try switching to UXA or glamor and see if the glitch persists with abiword.

It's quite strange that I can't reproduce the glitch, as I also have sandybridge chipset and use SNA acceleration (only difference I see is that I have (gen6, gt1) in Xorg log). I've also enabled DRI3 and Tearfree, so you could try if the glitch persists with those, but other than that I'm running out of ideas.

Nevertheless, reporting both the text selection color issue, and graphical glitch as a bug would be most appropriate thing to do at this point.

Salkay · 2016-03-22 05:52:07

Bug filed here.

Thanks for all the help, ooo. FWIW I didn't troubleshoot much further for the graphics driver, because I'm loathe to restart right now, and I only really use Abiword when someone sends me a Microsoft Word document. (Mostly I use vim or LyX.)

Arch Linux

#1 2016-02-14 11:23:48

[partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#2 2016-02-14 14:53:37

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#3 2016-02-14 19:22:28

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#4 2016-02-14 19:56:52

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#5 2016-02-16 10:20:53

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#6 2016-02-16 13:35:52

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#7 2016-02-16 18:30:12

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#8 2016-03-10 05:24:33

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#9 2016-03-10 19:22:35

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#10 2016-03-11 00:23:21

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#11 2016-03-11 01:01:16

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#12 2016-03-11 01:12:18

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#13 2016-03-11 05:14:11

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#14 2016-03-12 03:25:41

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#15 2016-03-12 19:33:21

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#16 2016-03-17 01:09:27

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#17 2016-03-17 02:33:07

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#18 2016-03-17 02:38:55

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#19 2016-03-17 13:11:35

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

#20 2016-03-22 05:52:07

Re: [partially SOLVED issues remain] Abiword select text in black.

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